1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to metal cutting, and more particularly to cutting through bomb casings. Most specifically, the present invention relates to large dud ordnance.
2. Background
Dud disarmament often includes establishing a hole in the metal casing of the dud and igniting the explosive. The hole is defined to be large enough whereby the gases generated by the burning explosive are vented in a manner so the explosive burns out completely without detonation.
In the past, ITROD torches have been used to form the vent hole. However, large duds, that is bombs five hundred pounds or over, are subject to special problems which makes it difficult to use ITROD torches on these duds. For example, these large duds may become embedded and may have antidisturbance devices on them which causes them to explode if the dud is moved. Furthermore, the hole defined in the casing of these duds to burn the warhead must be of precisely controlled dimensions. If the hole is too small, the burning of the warhead will explode the bomb, yet if the hole too large, insufficient pressure will be held maintained in the bomb casing to sustain burning. In the latter case, some of the warhead will remain unburned creating further problems of disposal.
As the ITROD torches are designed for use on small devices, an individual ITROD torch will not define a hole large enough for use on large duds. Therefore several spaced apart ITROD torches must be combined to define a hole large enough to be suitable for use on large duds. However, combining ITROD torches has many problems which effectively preclude their use in such an application. For example, all of the torches must work together and each must work properly to create such a hole. If one torch does not operate as efficiently as the others, the hole may not be properly sized. If any one of the multiple ITROD torches does not work properly, the hole will be too small and the dud ordnance may explode instead of having a desired burn out. Even the very act of mounting the ITROD torches on a large dud has drawbacks. Due to the existence of the aforementioned antididturbance devices, the positioning of the ITROD torches may, itself, be dangerous. To position four or more torches increases the possibility of exploding the bomb via the antidisturbance device. Even if these ITROD torches could be properly positioned, they may not cut the bomb casing efficiently thereby requiring larger torches. The larger torches makes it more difficult to properly and safely mount them on the dud.